COMUNICATO STAMPA

Fondazione Edmund Mach (FEM) is launching an innovative European research project aimed at significantly reducing the time required to develop new fermented foods, with the goal of creating more efficient, resilient and sustainable production systems capable of addressing the challenges of a rapidly evolving food market.

The technological core of the project, named SpeedyFermHub and recently presented during the kick-off meeting held in San Michele all’Adige with eleven international partners, is a high-throughput multidisciplinary platform. By integrating advanced microbiology, chemical and sensory analysis, and artificial intelligence, the project seeks to overcome the bottlenecks of traditional research, enabling faster and more precise optimisation of fermentation processes relevant to the agri-food sector.

Funded by the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests (MASAF) within the framework of the European partnership FutureFoodS (co-funded by Horizon Europe), the project is coordinated by FEM and involves a consortium of excellence including the Institute of Food Production Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR-ISPA, Foggia), the University of Verona, and leading international research centres: CSIC-ICTAN and the University of the Basque Country (Spain), the University of Évora (Portugal), VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (Finland), Tarsus University (Türkiye), Aarhus University (Denmark), INRAE (France), and the associated partner CONICET-CIFASIS (Argentina).

The project methodology follows a “funnel” selection strategy: starting from a broad initial screening of hundreds of samples, which will be analysed using the platform’s rapid techniques, the number of variants will be progressively reduced to identify a limited set of high-potential prototypes. These will then undergo more in-depth characterisation to select those with the best technological and quality performance.

“Beyond the specific application cases,” explains Franco Biasioli, Head of the Sensory Quality Unit at the Research and Innovation Centre, “the project aims to define a new paradigm for fermentation research — a field currently experiencing a strong revival and at the centre of a genuine scientific and technological revolution.”

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